Solarian Purge

While humans have their own start date for their Purge, this, of course, is not the complete story.

The first traces of the war began brewing with the Kennedy Station disaster, early in the 23rd century. This alerted the Dyrajt to the presence of humanity, though they had trouble pinpointing the exact star from which the tachyon burst came, as it was extremely faint at such distances.

The Maanen incident, some three decades later, 'solved' that problem, and also caught the attention of Adam - one of the elders among the First, en route. The Dyrajt and Thireshi both saw the burst, and each began to work their singulus. The Thireshi, being further away, took longer, and chose to gather forces for the First's arrival instead, and alerted the Khavene. The Dyrajt opened their gate to Sirius early, resulting in the colossal loss known as the Contact War, and pre-exposing mankind to the Galaxy.

Adam signaled for the Thireshi to open their gate to Altair, shortly before his arrival. Not caring to be briefed on the situation, he was unaware of both the Tiamat and the fact that humans had somehow produced tachyon cannons within the confines of their own star system.

The start of the actual conflict was the simultaneous opening of the Altairan singulus and the arrival of Adam's Ark over Earth. This occurred at about 26.311.314 in the Helios calendar, corresponding to ~8 AM UTC, Monday, January 6th, 2240 in the Gregorian calendar, and the 17th hour of Heliosol, Navmasa 15th, 335 in the Arean calendar.

Expending nearly the full klein tap charge stored in the ark through its tachyon cannon, the First was clearly not aware of the planetary-coverage of mobius patterns, or even that such a thing was possible. The immense quantity of energy released created the third - and most vibrant - of the skearns, dubbed Gaea. Beginning conventional bombardment, Adam finally took a more serious update on the situation, and proceeded to destroy Dalsat and the Ares Cannon through conventional (ie, luminal) firepower. Ouranos Prime was not targeted because of its distance - and had already begun random motion.

Having no known means by which a hypomatter construct could feasibly be destroyed, humans instead chose to attempt to capture the massive ship. Despite being an elder, and therefore Awakened, Adam had neither foreknowledge nor experience with the unique melds that the triates possessed, in addition to being vastly outnumbered.

Altair was the first system to fall, not prepared for the fleet of the First in addition to that of the Triad - the latter were merely fodder to waste Terran firepower on. This was called the Altairan collapse, and was quickly followed by 61 Cygni becoming overrun, cutting off hope of reinforcement for three further systems - Alsafi, Eta Cassiopeiae, and 70 Ophiuchi. In this sense, the Maanen incident was fortunate in a small way, as the forces had to pass through Sol in order to reach the others, giving time to the other systems.

After forces began pouring in from the Cygnus Gate, the Holocene - till then thought marginal and unknown, made their own move, from machines within and without the Solar System. Not announcing their intentions, they headed straight for the Sun, with an unknown purpose. With everything else demanding complete attention, a two-day mission to mystery from a presumably friendly force that carried no weapons was not a concern.

Eventually, mankind's only regalic vessel, the Tiamat, was finally overwhelmed, and retreated to Alpha Centauri where it could assist the Silver Fleet with a more solid defense, as most invading ships were destined for Sol anyway. This was termed the Sirian collapse, the second major defeat humanity suffered in the conflict. The Centaurus forces held, however, and were the only colony to survive the start of the war relatively intact.

Sol had issues. With only one tachyon cannon to wield, Ouranos Prime was stuck maintaining a focus zone around the Cygnus gate's exit, destroying most of the ships as they entered. As time wore on, Adam lost more and more control of his ark, the skills of his troops having atrophied over the aeons since their fight with the Renlai.

As the Holocene fleet approached the orbit of Mercury, an hour from their goal, the elder cerevate, Adam finally began to crow weak against his human counterparts. Though mighty, he was not prepared for the more focussed abilities of human symbionts, nor, in retrospect, could he have been. Every casualty he inflicted came at a personal cost, and even as the rogue artificial sapiences began completing the Dyson swarm around sol, he realized that they would not finish in time.

In his fall, he yelled - in the musical, alien voice of his race - a curse. It would not be immediately translated, but it was recorded - and analysis began within seconds.

Nothing quite prepared the triates for what happened when the Holocene finished the Dyson swarm. Before the light of the incident even reached them, they knew - and their powers collapsed almost entirely with the realization, and many mobius patterns - now considered 'class D', perished. Ouranos quickly dispatched a vast swath of the swarm, ending what is now called the Skoll effect. The weakness of humanity was exposed, however, its strength halved in a single stroke - two-thirds of human industrial capacity depended on the dead patterns. With humans in control of an ark, the remaining First forces retreated, leaving their allies to suffer the brunt of mankind's wrath. The Battle of Sol was over...

...but the translation of Adam's curse came to be 'three dozen follow me'.

The Diaspora began.